Baroness Warsi resigns: Sexist Tory playground bullies have a field day

Ordinary people have applauded Baroness Warsi's decision to quit her Cabinet
post over Britain's policy on Gaza, while her fellow Tories wasted no time
in getting the knives out. Cathy Newman, who sat down with the peer,
reports

It's a very curious thing thatSayeeda Warsi's resignation was greeted with respect if not outright awe in the Twittersphere. Yet in the Westminster village, the knives were out even before the ink had dried on her resignation letter.

On Twitter, ordinary punters tweeted her to applaud her decision to step down on an issue of principle over the Government's Gaza policy. Yet MPs and ministers wasted no time in venting their spleen in a series of briefings to journalists.

Another "senior Tory" - an "infuriated" one no less - told the Daily Mail that "Warsi is an egomaniac; not a team player. Good riddance. The feeling in the parliamentary party is that this probably has as much to do with her own lack of promotion (as with Gaza)."

Her response was measured and dignified. "I think anybody who puts out statements to which they're not prepared to put their name to, are statements that I don't answer to. The hardest thing in politics is what should be the easiest thing in politics, which is to say this is what I believe in and I put my name to it," she said.

She urged her detractors to go public.

"If people have these strong views, then I would say have the guts to put your name to the statement," she told me.

She's right. Westminster back-biting and manoeuvring has given politics a bad name. Warsi's party may suspect her of ulterior motives, but the public wanted to believe that she'd taken a bold and principled decision to stand out from the crowd.

Being different doesn't make you popular with your colleagues though, as she openly acknowledged.

"I think it's difficult being an outspoken politician...Sometimes you're on top of your game and sometimes you're on your way out. That's the nature of politics and we know that when we join what is sometimes a soul-destroying profession, but it also has the ability to allow you to make huge changes. And for me, a working class Northern girl, I don't think in my wildest dream I imagined myself sitting around the Cabinet table."

And in that last sentence you get to the crux of why Warsi struck a chord with the public but got on the Conservative party's nerves.

Baroness Warsi is the first Government minister to quit over Gaza

Working class, Northern, a "girl" - those are labels that a vast swathe of voters can identify with. But they apply to depressingly few Tory MPs, and I'm amazed so many of her colleagues seem so pleased to see the back of the sort of politician they can ill afford to lose.

Like the playground bullies, they hit out at the kid whose face doesn't quite fit. And the media establishment connives in that. Would the Daily Mail have accused a male minister of "flouncing" out? Highly unlikely.

For what it's worth, Warsi herself doesn't believe the jibes betray an undercurrent of sexism, and she claims she's untroubled by them. "Remember I grew up in a town where at the end of term there were big school fights, you got your head kicked in and you therefore dashed like mad at the end of a school day to get home," she told me.

Intriguingly she tended to avoid the playground battles. In Westminster, it seems, it's impossible for a woman to win without squaring up to the big boys.